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Using local agricultural biodiversity - A Kenyan farmer's story
Peninah Mwangangi has a smallholder farm in the arid region of Kitui, in eastern Kenya. She explains how using local traditional food crops have helped mitigate against harvest loss when the rains don't come. This is the third story in our 'Fork in the Road' series as part of our Rio+20 campaign.
Why understanding forest genetic resources is vital for future options
Laura Snook Programme Leader, Forest Genetic Resources Conservation and Use, talks about the need to harness the huge genetic diversity of different tree species to face challenges such as climate change and find sustainable ways to use and conserve it for our future. This video is the latest from our Rio+20 campaign blog.
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Erna Bennett - An early pioneer of Plant Genetic Conservation
Erna Bennett, a leading scientist and one of the first people to draw attention to genetic erosion and the importance of conserving agricultural biodiversity, sadly died last week on January 3rd 2012, after a long illness. She was instrumental in shaping plant genetic conservation research along with Otto Frankel and others during the 1950s and 1960s, with that influence continuing to this day.
Her strong and solid intellectual contributions, in particular those on genecology and her insistence to link farmers to the conservation efforts, were outstanding and original, combining practical commitment with intellectual rigour.
I first met Erna Bennett in 1974 when I was a student on Professor J.G. Hawke's MSc course. She has driven up all the way from Rome in her grey Lancia Fulvia Coupe. Then I met her again when she and Trevor Williams recruited me for a mission to Northern Nigeria to collect early millet landraces. Later when I was a young consultant in FAO I would sometimes have lunch with her in the cafeteria. She was indeed a remarkable person and did some great pioneer work in genetic resources conservation. She had a very sharp mind and graped the issues we face extremely well. She will be missed.
Administration AreaCROP WILD RELATIVES | EURISCO | THE AGROBIODIVERSITY GRAPEVINE | PROMUSA | PLATFORM FOR AGROBIODIVERSITY RESEARCH
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This work by Bioversity International is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. |
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